foreword
In August 2023, I got this in my inbox: “Hello, Cay! I’m Tagir Valeev. You may remember me from some discussions in mailing lists. Also, we met in person during a conference….”
I thought that was odd. Of course I knew Tagir—and not just from those mailing list discussions. I am the author of the classic Core Java book that, since Java 1.0, aims to explain modern Java to professional programmers. As I update the book (for its 13th edition), I need to poke around many obscure and tricky aspects of the Java language and library. Every so often, I am thoroughly stumped about some subtle point, fire up my favorite search engine, and find a thoughtful discussion by none other than Tagir. This man really knows his way around Java. He ought to write a book. …
That’s what his email was about. “I’m writing my very first book,” he wrote and asked me to write a foreword. He pitched his book as follows: “In the book, I concentrate on common and recurring mistakes that developers make in Java programs and try to advise on how to avoid them.”